Chopper crash on top of car

The odds might be small, but I bet if you asked the relatives of the small village of Lockerbie what they thought about air travel and its effects....

You would get a very personal viewpoint...

John.

Demonstrates how safe helicopters are to fly in, one injured and three unharmed. Had it been an airplane they would probably all be dead. Unfortunate for the guy on the ground though.

John

One point of clarification for those of us that speak the American dialect of the English language (with its multitude of dialects). What is a 'bakkie'? I don't agree with the comment in regards to the airplane. With a good pilot in the same circumstances, the pilot and passengers would have at least as good a chance of survival. A helicopter is a "Frantic (or Epiletic) Palm Tree".

"I am NOT smart enough to know that I can't do it"

In a forced landing scenario a helicopter ideally lands at a speed of less than a few mph, very similar to a normal landing. Further they are designed with a vertical impact factored in, a crumple zone if you will. Airplanes on the other hand would be touching down at a minimum of forty knots and often considerably more. The approach angle of the helicopter is also more favorable, being very steep and allowing for approaches over power lines, lamp standards etc into small areas. Airplanes approach at 3 - 5 degrees and hitting a power pole at 60 knots forty feet above the ground bites every time.

John

Try hitting a power pole forty feet up in a helicopter !!!!" Bites" would fall woefully short of describing that mangled scenario.

Losing power in a helicopter "just after take off" is one of the most dangerous times for a chopper since there generally isn't enough forward speed or altitude to fully take advantage of the autorotation of the helicopter to regain control of the aircraft in time to really land in the most desirable (pronounced: "best of the worst") location. Unfortunately, without power the glidescope is steep and it's more of a controlled fall than really flying and is difficult to compare with gliding as the rotor can apparently be "spun up" by essentially diving a bit...this energy can then be used to land quite gently considering the engine is contributing nothing. Since this potentially soft landing can happen just about anywhere the occupants and aircraft are not placed in the same risk as an airplane that is coming down with no power (who can glide easily...landing is the problem). Not many landing-ready pieces of ground there's no free roads or runways within gliding distance. A chopper doesn't have the same handicap even though it does need an obstacle free piece of real-estate or a water-ditching package if it's operating above large bodies of water.

I did a fair amount of reading on the subject after getting an email from my brother: He works as a surveyor up north and the chopper he was supposed to take one morning (he had called in sick) had an engine failure and the pilot sure earned his salary that day above the pine forests of the canadian shield. He ditched on a sandbar in the middle of a river (now that's flying!)...in Canada...in the spring just after the snow melted (brrrrr...). Everyone managed to get to shore fine and the chopper was okay once it had been plucked out of the shallow water by another chopper, the engine repaired and things tidy'ed up. Sounded like a good day to stay home!

As for the downward crashing strength of a helicopter...I believe Bell designs for 20G of downward loading for anything concerning passengers.

"Since this potentially soft landing can happen just about anywhere the occupants and aircraft are not placed in the same risk as an airplane that is coming down with no power"

You might be interested to know that in a fixed wing aircraft accident it is not normally the crash that kills the occupants. Most aircraft are pretty good in a crash landing and protect the passengers fairly well.

The thing that kills is the fire that, due to the ruptured fuel tanks, invariably breaks out shortly after the crash. Keep in mind that a fully laden 747 has something like 200,000 liters of jet fuel on board at take off.

This is certainly born out in the rare instances when airliners have run out of fuel and crashed. The majority of passengers survive the event with relatively minor injuries.

"The only time you have too much fuel, is when you are on fire..."

And as basic flying rules: "Try to stay in the middle of the air. Do not go near the edges of it. The edges can be recognized by the appearance of ground, trees, buildings, sea, and interstellar space. These are rather difficult places to fly at."

(A quote from a 1922 POH, Army Pilots Operations Handbook)

Wangito (An old pilot)

Glider pilots don't need any fuel!

Some years back we had bumper stickers made up to advertise gliding, they said.

Wow...in 1922 they were concerned with the boundary posed by interstellar space! I would be more worried about the trees and ground...

"You might be interested to know that in a fixed wing aircraft accident it is not normally the crash that kills the occupants. Most aircraft are pretty good in a crash landing and protect the passengers fairly well."

Ya, I know...I'm actually a aerospace stress engineer. Unfortunately there is not real "crumple zone" on an airplane since each frame is designed for very specific load cases and all the extra excess material is trimmed away...because of this, if the plane finds itself in one of these situations (i.e. wheels up landing, hard landing w/gear down, water landing) the structure has been made to cover these situations. Anything outside this typical flight/crash envelope is normally disasterous. Most passenger seats and the structure they connect to are built to take 9G of forward loading (or 16G for newer planes) yet only 3G sideways. Helicopters tend to crash in a very downward direction so they do have somewhat of a crumple zone...it's the structure, fuel tanks and seats of the passengers.

For large passenger aircraft, the possibilty of fires after a successful ditch is the biggest problems, especially when there's lots of people to evacuate. To get certified an airplane needs to be able to evacuate everyone out of half of the exits (since there might be a fire on one side of the aircraft) in under 90 seconds. This made the A380 a particularly interesting case with 800+ people on board...and probably the reason why blended wing aircraft haven't already been (and probably won't ever be) used for passenger aircraft.

Anyway, this is getting a bit long winded and off topic so I'll sign off.

Hi kkjensen,

"Ya, I know...I'm actually a aerospace stress engineer."

You've let the cat out of the bag, now we know who to ask with all those usually long winded threads that get stuck up on some sort of aviation conundrum.

Where were you when we needed you when we needed you, on that exacerbating "Airplane on a Treadmill" thread?

Woah...I can't believe I just spent the time to actually read that behemoth! Kudos for the F1 vs F-18 analogy, it couldn't have been said better. I think a nice clear Free Body Diagram with a blob for the airplane and one force vector for the thrust would have been very tough to argue with...but lets just leave that beast asleep. RIP (no need to reply...I feel your pain)

A "bakkie" is our word adopted from the Afrikaans word "bak" that means holder or bin referring to a vehicle with a loading bin commonly known as a "pick-up" or small truck. If you ever visit South- Africa you will see that tere are bakkies here, and will find few people knowing what a "pick-up" is. They will probably think you are looking for a lady of the night... Another way this word could have became popular is from the word "buggy" which was as "bakkie" drawn by a horse..

The article says that the Helicopter crashed immediately after take-off. In such a case the pilot was flying in what is known as the "Dead Man Curve" flight envelope. It is called like that because when flying inside this operational regime your chances of walking alive from the crash scene are very very slim. So He IS a good pilot. For that 3 hurrays.

Back in the sixties I knew a girl in Beer-Sheba Israel, who's father was a truck driver. He was on his way home when a training airplane, a small twin jet engine French made Fouga-Magister, CM-180, from the nearby IAF (Israeli Air force) flight school, crashed on top of his his truck killing him and a passenger. I bet you one to million, that they also didn't look up, And I am absolutely sure they never knew what hit them. Is this what you call bad luck

"though I fly through the valley of the death, I shall fear no evil. For I am t 80,000 feet and climbing."

Radio transmission of a SR-71 pilot, over Iraqi airspace.

Wangito.

Not to mention covering ground at nearly 1 Kms^-1.

One of the lessons a student pilot is taught is " If you are making a forced landing on a highway make sure to approach at a speed higher than that of the traffic so that you can 'insert yourself without landing atop a vehicle.

The copter pilot was probably denied the option by his low airspeed just after lift-off.

No sir, It was because he landed in a parking lot. Car speed was zero.

Wangito.

When it comes to forced landings glider pilots are probably the most experienced. Every landing you do in a glider is a forced landing. If you wish to fly cross country you must have performed at least one landing in a paddock or field that is not designed for landing aircraft and that you have only seen from the air.

A real life forced out landing certainly gets the blood pumping. One of the universities near where I flew was doing a study on the stress that pilot is under whilst flying an aircraft. During a cross country racing event they rigged up several pilots with bio-monitoring equipment. They were astounded at the results, a real life forced out landing turned out to be about as stressful as being launched in the space shuttle. The pilots pulse and blood pressures went through the roof. I can't remember the exact figures but I do remember that one pilots pulse rate was approaching 180 beats per minute during a forced landing.

This is a bit off spec but my cousin was driving on the motorway at night, there were very few cars about, then a car on the opposite carrageway hit the central reservation, flipped and landed on top of his car. about a 240km/h impact! Unfortunately, the other driver died, Now 2yrs later, my cousin can just about walk.

So what are the odds on that happening?